


Sisters

by enigmaticblue



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-30
Updated: 2010-03-30
Packaged: 2017-10-08 12:47:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/75798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigmaticblue/pseuds/enigmaticblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's no friend like a sister.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sisters

“Do you think he’ll be okay?” Buffy asked, sounding a little anxious.

Dawn rolled her eyes. “Buffy, he’s been taking care of himself for over a century. I don’t think an evening out dusting vampires and training baby Slayers is going to kill him.”

Buffy sighed. The last month or so with Spike and Dawn had been amazing. True, there had been a few really spectacular fights, complete with yelling and slamming doors, but that was just them. Part of being a family.

Tonight was the last night Dawn would be in Rome before heading off to Oxford, and then it would be just her and Spike. Buffy wondered if this was how her mother had felt right before she went to UC Sunnydale—equal parts worry and pride and sorrow. Dawn would come back for holidays and that kind of thing, but it would never be the same.

In truth, Buffy was worrying over Spike’s safety because she knew how annoyed Dawn got when she worried over her sister’s.

“I know, I just—”

“You’re worried about me, so it’s leaking onto Spike,” Dawn said wisely, grinning when she saw the surprise on Buffy’s face. “Please, Buffy. You’re my sister. I know these kinds of things. I’ll be fine.”

“I know you will be,” Buffy assured her. “And we’ll be in town fairly often for meetings with Giles.”

“And think how much traveling you guys will be able to do,” Dawn pointed out. “You’ll be able to just pack up and leave anytime you want to without worrying about me.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m not going to miss you,” Buffy replied.

Dawn’s face softened. “Ditto.”

“Okay, so first off is ice cream,” Buffy announced. “What else did you want to do tonight?”

Dawn shrugged. “Let’s just see where the evening takes us.”

~~~~~

Dawn ate her gelato with relish, having long ago decided that the ice cream they had in the States just couldn’t compare. Buffy was strolling along next to her, devouring hers with the same enthusiasm. “You know, it’s amazing that we haven’t put on a hundred pounds since moving here,” the Slayer commented.

“It’s that Slayer metabolism,” Dawn replied. “Good thing the monks made me out of you, because otherwise I’d be the one gaining weight.”

Buffy snorted. “Excuse me? I’ve seen you eat, Dawn. You eat more than anyone I know.”

“Mmm,” Dawn agreed, her mouth full of gelato. “You’ve been doing your share of the chowing down, too.”

Buffy glanced over at her. “Are you going to be okay at Oxford? For food and stuff?”

“I’ll be fine,” Dawn assured her sister for the hundredth time. “You talked to Giles about it, remember? He explained about the colleges and everything. Besides, he won’t be far away, and I can always take the train to see him on the weekends and make him feed me.”

The Slayer nodded, knowing that Dawn was probably getting sick of all the questions, but she couldn’t help it. She was going to miss having her annoying little sister around. “You can always call us, too. You know that, right? Anytime you need me.”

“I know,” Dawn said, having heard her sister’s assurances on this front just as many times. “Really, Buffy. I’m going to be fine. Better than fine.”

Buffy sighed. “It’s just—Mom would be so proud of you.”

Dawn suddenly found herself blinking back tears; they didn’t talk about their mom all that often, and to have Buffy say something like that—“She’d be proud of you, too, Buffy.”

“Do you really think so?” Buffy asked.

Not for the first time did Dawn feel as though she was the older sister, and Buffy the younger. It was moments like this when Buffy’s Slayer-general mask cracked, and Dawn could see the insecure, vulnerable woman that she was. Moments like this that Dawn was glad that Buffy wasn’t going to be alone when she went off to college.

Buffy would always need someone; Dawn was pretty much okay on her own. Of course, she’d had to learn how to stand on her own two feet that last year in Sunnydale, because no one had had the time to take care of her.

“Of course,” Dawn said. “You kept me alive and saved the world. What more could you do, Buffy?”

She shook her head. “There are a lot of things I’ve done that I’m glad Mom doesn’t know about, though.”

“I’m sure that Mom could say the same,” Dawn protested.

Buffy snorted with laughter. “Maybe, but I think I got the worst out of her when I had that aspect of the demon. You should have seen the look on her face when she realized that I knew she’d had sex with Giles.”

Dawn made a face. “Ewww. Did you have to bring that up? And I did see her face, since I was hiding in the hallway, and I saw her coming out. She was pretty freaked.”

“Hey, _I_ was pretty freaked,” Buffy responded. “Do you remember the time she let us play hooky from school, right after Mom and Dad got divorced?”

“When we ate popcorn and watched old movies all day?” Dawn asked with a smile. “Yeah, that was great. It was just the three of us. How about when we had the chicken pox?”

Buffy smiled softly. “She kept running out of calomine lotion, and putting socks on our hands so we wouldn’t scratch.”

“We were really close, weren’t we?” Dawn asked.

“Yeah, we were.” Buffy looked off into the night. “Dawn, I—”

“Don’t say it.” Dawn cut her off. “We all did what we had to do. It was harder without Mom there, that’s all.”

“Yeah.” Buffy took a deep breath. “Still, I want to be a little better about the communicating thing.” When Dawn raised her eyebrows in disbelief, Buffy shot her a look. “Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything!”

“You didn’t have to.”

They stared at one another, and then they both started laughing at the same time, their eyes suspiciously moist.

“I love you, Dawnie.”

Dawn smiled. That’s one thing that would never change. “I know. I love you, too.”

After all, they were sisters.


End file.
